


Rogue

by ChipTheKeeper



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/F, Friends With Benefits, Idk how to tag things, bounty hunter Cara, post season one, yes i recycle character names who cares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24448432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipTheKeeper/pseuds/ChipTheKeeper
Summary: Cara Dune rolled her eyes for what must have been the tenth time in the hour she’d spent with her latest bounty. Captain Rylan Killis sure wasn’t shy about saying any damn thing that popped into her head, apparently. As annoying as it should have been, Cara found herself almost relieved just to have some company. Space was too quiet, something that didn’t normally bother her but was testing her sanity lately.Cara has a unique approach to bounty hunting. But the rules of the Guild Code won't be the only ones that get broken....
Relationships: Cara Dune/Original Character(s), Cara Dune/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24





	1. Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm back on my bullshit. The lack of gay Cara content is shameful so I'm just going to keep going.
> 
> This is completely unrelated to my Shock series even though I'm keeping the same OC. Call it an AU.

None of Cara Dune’s other bounties had ever been so _kriffing_ talkative.

Truthfully there hadn’t been that many yet -- she’d only been working for Greef Karga for a few months when she’d captured the mouthy smuggler -- but still. If hunting was always going to be like this, she thought, she might as well just go back to brawling with losers on Sorgan. But as fun as that was it didn’t pay very well, and Cara needed steady employment.

Anyway, this was her own fault, as the chatty blonde pilot quickly pointed out to her.

“You must be new at this,” she said, sitting bound on the floor of Cara’s gunship while the rookie hunter attempted to repair a leak in the fuel line so they could take off back to Nevarro. “Never heard of a bounty hunter capturing someone via tackling instead of a stun blast. Not to say I’m not grateful, though. That was pretty hot. And getting stunned is so not pleasant.”

Cara rolled her eyes for what must have been the tenth time in the hour she’d spent with this bounty. Captain Rylan Killis sure wasn’t shy about saying any damn thing that popped into her head, apparently. As annoying as it should have been, Cara found herself almost relieved just to have some company. Space was too quiet, something that didn’t normally bother her but was testing her sanity lately.

She’d been hoping to hear something from Mando by now. But wherever he was on his mission to find the kid’s people, it must have been out of range for the comms they’d traded. Cara had tried his frequency once or twice just to check in, but she hadn’t heard a peep back. As much as she hated to admit it, she kind of missed the little womp rat and his melodramatic Mandalorian dad. Teaming up with them had been the most interesting thing she’d done since leaving the Alliance.

At least, until she’d accepted the bounty puck on Captain Killis.

“I could help you with that, you know,” the blonde said, pulling Cara from her own thoughts.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Are you sure? Because it looks like you just put that in there backwards.”

“Don’t tell me how to fix my own ship,” Cara warned.

The smuggler shrugged. “Okay, well. When we end up getting ripped to atoms as you make the jump to lightspeed, just know my last thought will be ‘I told you so.’”

The hunter sighed. “Do you really know how to fix this?”

“I have the same problem on my own ship all the time. You don’t even have to let me loose, I can just tell you what to do,” she offered.

“Fine,” Cara conceded.

With the pilot’s help, the ship was fixed and space ready in just a few minutes.

“Thank you,” Cara said simply as she went to put her tools away.

“My pleasure,” Killis replied with a hint of a grin. “You know….I think I might be able to help you in another way. Well really, we could help each other.”

Cara looked skeptically at the smuggler, slumped on the floor with her hands bound in her lap. “Can’t really see how you’re in much of a position to help me.”

“Well, I definitely won’t be if you just turn me in by myself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The hunter asked with a confused raise of an eyebrow.

“Look, I know the size of the bounty on my head. Those Hutt bastards are cheap and I’m a really small fish,” Killis said with a sly, self-deprecating smile. “You take me in, you don’t even earn enough to cover the fuel you burned to get here. But I know where you can find someone that’ll make it more than worth your while.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?” Cara questioned with derision. “Every smooth-talking nerf herder that gets caught tries that line.”

“Well the difference between me and them is that I’m not a liar,” the pilot said with a look of sincerity that Cara couldn’t determine was an act or not. “Come on, I promise. I’ll get you to a huge bounty and in the meantime you can decide if you still want to turn me in too. But be warned, I will talk you out of it.”

She finished with a wink and let her offer hang in the silence of the engine room.

Cara ignored the flirtation but weighed the offer for a long moment. Finally she relented, knowing what Killis had said about her bounty not even covering her fuel was correct. “Fine. But you won’t talk me out of it. I’m still gonna bring you in.”

The smuggler shrugged. “Then at least I’ll have spent my last hours of freedom in the presence of a gorgeous woman,” she said, and Cara glared at her. “Oh, was that too forward? Sorry, don’t have much of a filter between my brain and my mouth.”

“You don’t say.”

Cara helped her to her feet and led her to the cockpit of the ship. Hesitantly, she unbound her hands and allowed her to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. Killis told her she knew of someone on Iego that the Hutts wanted far more than they wanted her, so the hunter set course for yet another Outer Rim planet, trying not to think about how screwed she would be if this didn’t work out.

“We should have taken my VCX. Could get there in half the time,” Killis exaggerated, reclining with her arms behind her head in the co-pilot’s seat as Cara made the jump to hyperspace. “So. You got a name?”

“Yep.”

The pilot laughed slightly. “Okay, I set you up for that. Will you tell me your name?”

“Nope.”

“Do you ever tell anyone your name?”

“Not often.”

“Do you ev--”

“You know if you want, I can bring you in cold,” Cara threatened while reaching for her blaster at her hip, suddenly at her wits’ end with the smuggler’s incessant questions and talking.

Killis threw her hands up in surrender.

“No thank you,” she said. “I just have….one more question.”

Cara glared at her, the Rebel tattoo under her left eye scrunching closer to it. “What?”

The smuggler pointed to her other tattoo, a ring of stripes around her right bicep. “How does an Alliance shock trooper end up working as a bounty hunter in the Outer Rim?”

Cara turned away to look out the viewport at nothing in particular. “That’s a long story.”

“Well, it’s a long way to Iego,” Killis said encouragingly, but the hunter showed no sign of wanting to share. “Okay, well the less you talk, the more I’m gonna want to so I guess you might as well just stun me now.”

“How do you know what this means?” Cara asked suddenly, motioning to her tattoo. “Did you serve?”

The last time she’d asked someone that question it was the Ugnaught. If it turned out this smuggler had also fought on the Empire’s side, Cara would have to bring her in cold after all.

“Yeah. I was an X-wing pilot,” she said, melting away the hunter’s suspicions. “Rogue Squadron.”

Cara raised an eyebrow in appreciation. “That was a pretty elite group.”

“Well, I’m pretty good,” Killis said with a flirtatious smile, which the other woman made a point to ignore, even if it was a great smile. Cara wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of knowing her plan to talk her way out of getting turned in might be starting to work.

“So what was your first battle?” she asked, surprising both of them. Cara hadn’t planned on encouraging her chatty bounty to talk more, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to swap a war story now and then.

“Scarif,” the pilot said heavily. “Barely made it out alive.”

“Yeah,” Cara said, taking on the same sad tone. “Me too.”

That caught Killis’s attention. “Really? As a dropper?” she asked, and Cara nodded. “I….I didn’t think anybody made it out from the ground.”

“Only a few of us did. And only because we’d already been wounded and brought back to the ships before….” she trailed off, but the thought didn’t need to be finished. Killis had been there. She knew as well as Cara what had happened. Not a soul that was still on the planet by the end of the battle had gotten out alive. Because by the end of the battle, there wasn’t even a planet at all.

“Wow, that’s….that’s lucky,” Killis said, clearly remembering the horrors of that first battle and the way it ended.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Cara said ruefully. “Lucky.”

She got up and left the cockpit, calling back to her bounty to offer her some dinner. Killis followed eagerly.

The two of them fell into an oddly comfortable conversation as Cara prepared a simple meal and they ate together. They’d been in many of the same battles, although in very different ways, and they each found they enjoyed hearing about how the other had experienced them. Cara found herself laughing along with Rylan (she’d insisted she call her by her first name when Cara finally admitted her own) as she told darkly funny stories from life in the pilot’s seat. The smuggler certainly had a way with words, and quite a charming personality. Not that Cara would ever admit it.

“So, how does a Rogue Squadron pilot end up a wanted bounty in the Outer Rim?” she asked, turning around Rylan’s earlier question, which she still hadn’t answered herself.

“Pretty easily,” the smuggler said with a chuckle. “Got discharged after Jakku, sent out into the real world with no plan for what to do next. And when you’ve got no plan and a background like mine, well….there’s really only one lifestyle you feel comfortable with. It just so happens to be one that tends to make people want to chase you across the galaxy.”

Cara had to shake her head as Rylan kicked her feet up on the chair beside her, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Watching her carefree demeanor, it was easy to forget she was more or less a prisoner on this ship. The hunter was trying her best to remember, but with each smile her will was fading.

“That background is Corellia, right?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah….how did you--”

“Read it on your chain code,” Cara said.

“Oh. Right,” Rylan said, nodding. “Always meant to get a new one of those.”

“I’d say I recommend it, but….little late for that now,” the hunter said with a smirk.

“We’ll see about that,” the smuggler said, smirking right back. “So, where are _you_ from?”

Cara’s face dropped all emotion and she looked away. “Nowhere,” she said.

“That’s not a place,” Rylan said, apparently unafraid to prod a bit.

“Might as well be.”

“Oh, come on. Everybody’s from somewhere,” she urged. “Or did you just, spring forth from the space dust? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’re so beautiful.”

Cara turned back to see her grinning and glared hard at her. Rylan knew she’d struck the nerve she was aiming for, but she also knew not to keep poking at it.

“Okay well, if it makes you feel any better,” the pilot said, “I hate where I’m from too.”

“I never said I hate where I’m from,” Cara snapped. On the contrary, she’d loved her home world and would give anything to return to it. But the Empire had taken it away, just as it had done to Scarif. Only unlike Scarif, Alderaan had posed no threat. The peaceful people of Alderaan had posed no threat.

But Cara wasn’t about to get into that with a stranger.

“So who’s this guy we’re going after?” she asked, changing the subject as quickly as she could.

Rylan blinked away her confusion over the sudden turn in the conversation. “Uh, name’s Herk Trager. He was my co-pilot a few years back but more recently became known for pissing off the Hutts like I’ve never seen. Apparently he stole a ship and some super expensive art collection from one of them, or….destroyed it? Reports were conflicting. All I know is that the reward is _huge_.”

“And how do you know he’ll be where we’re going?” Cara inquired suspiciously.

“He always talked about it being the place he’d retire if he ever needed to get off the grid,” the smuggler shrugged. “He was usually drunk when he talked about it, so I doubt he even remembers telling me.”

The hunter nodded. “And why do you feel so comfortable selling out someone you used to work with so closely?”

Rylan’s jaw and fist clenched simultaneously. “Because he’s not who I thought he was,” she said. “About a year into flying together he let slip that he’d worked with the Empire as an informant. When I immediately kicked him out of my crew he didn’t understand why that had been a deal-breaker. ‘What does it matter if the war’s over?’ he said.”

“It’ll always matter,” Cara said, quiet but strong.

“Exactly,” the smuggler agreed before growing silent for the first time since she’d been on the ship.

The hunter finished her drink and stood to return to the cockpit. “I think I’m gonna enjoy this job.”

~

When they finally landed on Iego and found their way to the cantina Rylan had pointed out as the place to find Herk Trager, Cara was eager to capture him and get him back to the ship. But the smuggler advised patience -- and politeness.

“This ain’t Tatooine,” she said, “you can’t just go around blasting or beating people up inside bars here.”

“Definitely not my kind of planet,” Cara replied as the two of them climbed to the roof of a building across from the cantina to watch for Trager.

Rylan snorted. “Yeah, kinda got that impression when you tackled the hell outta me without so much as a hello.”

“And give you the chance to get away? I may be new at this but I’m not that stupid.”

“Yet here I am, perfectly able to get away right at this very moment,” the Corellian pointed out.

Cara’s face reddened in embarrassment, and she was thankful for the darkness of the night that surrounded them. Killis had really gotten into her head, made her forget why they were together on this job. All the smooth talk, the charming smile, the shared experiences -- they’d completely served to lower her guard. And that was not an easy task when it came to a battle-hardened warrior like Cara Dune.

The smuggler really could have cut and run the moment they’d left the ship and Cara would have been out of luck. But she hadn’t. She’d kept her word so far, and although the hunter knew she shouldn’t, she found herself trusting her.

She supposed it wasn’t as dangerous to trust people now as it had been before she’d had her chain code concerns taken care of. No one would be attempting to haul her off to answer for her crimes against the New Republic anytime soon. But opening up to people came with many more consequences than just that, Cara knew. There were much more personal things at stake than just her freedom, and since she’d lost her home world, she’d been incredibly selective as to who got to see the softer side of her.  
As disarming as the chatty blonde smuggler had been so far, Cara was determined not to let her in any further.

“You can try to get away if you want,” she said, unholstering her blaster, “but I’m willing to bet I’m a quicker shot than you are a runner.”

Rylan gently pushed the end of the weapon away with a finger so it was no longer pointing at her. “I got no plans to make that bet, don’t worry.”

“Good.”

“I enjoy your company too much to run away from it,” she said with a roguish grin, which Cara tried her best to ignore.

After an hour of waiting and watching and idly chatting and not seeing any sign of Trager, the hunter began to grow restless. Just as she was about to declare that she was giving up and going inside to take a more proactive approach, Rylan gasped delightedly.

“There’s our guy,” she said, hopping up and pointing down at a tall, dark-haired human exiting the cantina. “I’ll go this way and stop him, you go around the other way to cut him off when he tries to run.”

Cara balked for a moment, questioning one more time the trustworthiness of the Corellian scoundrel before her. If she went with this plan and Rylan ran instead, she’d have no way to stop her, she’d lose them both. If it had all been a lie and this was somehow a ploy to get Cara outnumbered, she’d have even bigger problems. But Trager was already almost out of sight and she had to make a decision quickly.

She went with her gut. “Do it.”

Cara silently prayed that this wouldn’t be the end of her short-lived bounty hunting career as she gracefully descended from the roof. _One cute smile and you lose all the sense in your head_ , she admonished herself quietly.

She rounded the corner to the street where she hoped the two former crewmates would be and saw Rylan confronting Trager as she said she would. The Corellian spotted her over his shoulder and winked as Cara got closer, her blaster at the ready.

Then she punched him straight in the face.

“What the kriffing hell, Killis!” Trager exclaimed, holding his bloody nose with one hand and flailing back at her head with the other. Cara rushed in to catch his arm before it got anywhere close and used it to force him to the ground.

“Nothing personal, partner,” Rylan said, spitting out the last word with disdain. It sure looked personal to Cara.

She secured restraints on Trager’s wrists as he muttered confused protests, then she looked up at the smuggler. “Don’t recall that being part of the plan.”

Rylan shrugged. “Guess you rubbed off on me.”

Cara couldn’t fight a laugh. “You learn fast.”

The two of them escorted the wanted man halfway back to the ship, talking over his protests until Cara finally had enough and hit him with a stun blast. At that point they had to carry him, and the bounty hunter had to admit she was glad Rylan was still around to help with that.

When they finally dragged him onto the ship, they wasted no time throwing him into the carbon-freezing unit for safe keeping.

“So, am I gonna need to hop in there next?” the smuggler asked, nodding her head at the chamber as it froze Trager in perfect hibernation.

Cara didn’t answer. She just silently reached into a pocket on her utility belt and pulled out a bounty puck. She placed it on a counter beside her and activated it. Rylan’s face appeared in holographic form, the word “WANTED” flickering in bright red Aurebesh beneath her chin.

“Hey, that’s not a bad picture,” she said, admiring her own mug. “A little scruffy-lookin’ but not ba--”

She cut off with a startled jump as Cara smashed the puck with her gloved fist, making the holograph disappear.

“Far as I’m concerned, if the Hutts want you they can come get you themselves,” she said, smirking at the Corellian, who sighed with relief.

“That’ll be the day,” Rylan said. “Hey, I appreciate it. How about I buy you a drink? Least I can do to thank you for taking pity on me.”

“First of all, this isn’t pity,” Cara replied. “And also, you seem to have forgotten I took your credit pouch when I picked you up.”

Rylan frowned, patting each of the empty pockets on her pants and jacket just to be sure. “Damn.”

Cara shook her head in amusement. “Don’t worry, I’ll buy,” she said. “Then I’ll give it back.”

They returned to the same cantina for a celebratory drink, this time not as captive and captor but as….friends? It was hard to pinpoint what they were at the moment, but Cara didn’t think too much about it. She was more focused on ignoring the way their knees brushed against each other as they sat closely together at the crowded bar.

They chatted through one drink then ordered another before Rylan asked the question that put Cara on her heels.

“So if it’s not pity, why are you letting me go? Which part of my persuasive personality worked on you?”

She flashed the same flirtatious smile she’d been using the whole day and Cara had to bite her tongue to keep from saying it was exactly that. Instead she just shrugged. “I got no desire to make trouble for fellow Alliance war heroes.”

Rylan chuckled at the term. Neither of them were particularly fond of being thought of as heroes. They’d just done what they knew was right and that was all there was to it. There had been no glory in it.

“Sure, sure,” she said, unconvinced. “Couldn’t have been my undeniable combination of charm and wit.”

She reached out to casually rest her hand on the back of Cara’s chair and held eye contact with the bounty hunter intensely. Cara bit her lip, drowning for the briefest of moments in the ocean of blue in Rylan’s eyes before her words actually sank in.

“You mean your constant and annoying chatter?” Cara deflected. “No, it definitely was not that.”

The pilot gave a knowing smirk. “Right.”

They left after finishing the second drink and walked silently back to Cara’s ship. The bounty hunter returned Rylan’s belongings to her -- minus the credits for their drinks -- then they stood at the top of the exit ramp together, both inexplicably hesitant to part ways. Cara needed to get to Nevarro as quickly as possible to claim her prize (Karga had confirmed over hologram that Trager would indeed fetch quite a reward), and Rylan had to find a ride back to the planet they’d met on to make sure her beloved VCX-100 hadn’t been stolen or impounded. And yet neither of them seemed in a hurry to rush off and leave each other’s company.

It was nice to have someone around for once, Cara had to admit, especially someone who got it. Who got how hard life was after the war. They’d fought in different ways and left in different ways, but they both knew. They knew nothing could ever be normal again. Not that they could even remember what normal felt like anymore.

But beyond even that, there was something about Rylan that made Cara feel comfortable in a way she couldn’t explain. Part of her wanted to explore that comfort, another part was terrified of it.

Finally Rylan held out her hand and broke the silence. “Until our paths cross?” she asked with that easy smile Cara had been actively trying not to get lost in all night.

The bounty hunter took the hand but couldn’t convince her mouth to repeat the phrase, as the Corellian was expecting her to do. Between the alcohol, the electrifying feel of another person’s skin against hers, and the warmth of the smile before her, Cara was burning up. 

Unable to stand the heat a second longer, she tugged on the hand she held, bringing Rylan’s body within inches of hers. The smuggler only had a moment to look shocked before Cara grabbed her by the back of the head and kissed her.

The act took them both by surprise, but they went with it. Rylan kissed her back eagerly, gently pushing her against the wall of the ship to balance them. The bounty hunter felt her knees go weak as the kiss deepened and their hands began to explore each other’s bodies.

Before her brain could catch up to what her body was doing, Cara was leading her to her bunk. Rylan’s jacket was the first thing to come off, followed by Cara’s utility belt and armor, and soon enough there was nothing between them. Nothing but the white-hot desire of two people who wanted nothing more in that moment than each other.

When it was over, hours later, Cara wondered how badly she’d just violated the bounty hunters’ code. But as she felt herself drifting off peacefully to sleep, her body still entangled with Rylan’s, she figured there were worse things than going rogue for one night.


	2. Simple

Cara woke the next morning to an otherwise empty bunk. She wondered for a moment if she’d dreamed the whole thing, until her eyes landed on the gray jacket that was slung haphazardly across a nearby chair.

So it hadn’t been a dream. But that didn’t ease her mind much.

She was no stranger to one-night stands, but something about this felt different. Usually Cara didn’t give a second thought to kicking someone out of her bed in the morning, or leaving theirs before they even woke up. Usually she got what she needed from someone and that was the end of it. Usually her mind didn’t linger on whoever she’d spent the night with. But there was nothing usual about Rylan Killis.

Not that it mattered. She’d probably never see her again after today. And that was fine. Wasn’t it? Cara was a bounty hunter, an ex-shock trooper for kriff’s sake. She didn’t need anybody else. She didn’t want anybody else. Getting attached to people only led to pain. It was better, easier, not to have that weakness.

So why did her heart skip a beat when Rylan returned to the room, fully clothed but definitely fresh out of the shower?

“Oh, hey,” she said, surprised to see the bounty hunter up. “Did I wake you?”

“No, you’re good,” Cara assured her, sitting up but doing her best to stay under the covers.

“Hope you don’t mind, I borrowed the ‘fresher.”

“Not at all. You smell nice.” _What are you saying? Who are you?_

Rylan dragged the chair holding her jacket over to the bedside, sat backwards on it, and grinned at the other woman.

“So, last night was….fun,” she said with a bright smile. It faltered when Cara didn’t smile back. “At least I….thought you were having fun?”

“No, I was. I did,” Cara said. _I definitely did_. “It’s just….”

“It’s just now you don’t know if you should have had that fun,” Rylan read her mind effortlessly.

“No. Maybe?” she sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”

“Then don’t,” the Corellian said with a lazy shrug. “I’ve rarely thought about anything in my life and look how I turned out.”

“You turned out a scoundrel that got caught by a bounty hunter,” Cara reminded her.

“Yeah, and that worked out great for me,” Rylan said with her best charming smile. “And for her, I dare say.”

Cara had to bite back a smile of her own. “I’d say that remains to be determined.”

The smuggler’s eyebrows raised excitedly. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think that’s an invitation to keep trying.”

She leaned the chair forward and gave her a teasingly light kiss, pulling away when Cara attempted to get more from it.

The bounty hunter growled at her. “Clearly you don’t know me very well.”

Rylan chuckled. “Well, that’s true actually,” she conceded. “What if I said I wanted to?”

“I’d tell you not to hold your breath,” Cara replied. Despite all the talking they’d done up to this point, it hadn’t gone much further than just war stories. She worried if she shared anything more personal than that she’d leave herself too open, too vulnerable. No, it was best just to keep the walls up, the armor on. Metaphorically, at least.

“Fair enough,” Rylan said and leaned down to kiss her again, this time not at all lightly. She pulled the covers away from Cara’s body and replaced them with her own.

The bounty hunter meant to protest, to kick her out of her bed, her ship, and her life. But Rylan’s touches were exhilarating, her kisses intoxicating. That was worth keeping her around for a little while longer at least.

When their one-night stand finished extending into the morning, the Corellian laid next to her as they both tried to catch their breath.

“They really gotta start building bigger bunks in these ships,” she said off-handedly.

Cara turned to her side so they were facing each other but now with some room between them. “Better?”

“I do very much enjoy the view,” Rylan said with a grin, and Cara felt herself blush as the pilot’s hand lightly brushed her hair away from her eye. The hand continued down her tattooed arm and over her side, then stopped to linger on a harsh-looking scar just above her hip. “Where’d you pick this one up?”

Cara grimaced at the memory.

“That’s my souvenir from Scarif,” she said, surprising herself at how willingly she offered up that information when she’d never told anyone about it before. “Never would have thought getting shot would _save_ my life.”

Rylan looked at her with sad eyes and a half smile. “Well, I’m glad it did.”

Cara had to break her eye contact. She’d spent so much of her life after Scarif feeling guilty about having survived in such a way. And after the Alderaan Disaster, that guilt had only multiplied. She wasn’t often glad for that blaster bolt or the ugly scar it left behind. But Rylan was, and that confused the hell out of her. They’d known each other for what, two days? Was it just the sex talking, or was she seeing something in Cara that she couldn’t even see in herself? Something in the way she gently caressed the scar told her it was the latter.

Cara couldn’t handle such an intimate touch any longer. “Think it’s my turn for the ‘fresher,” she said, rising and leaving the Corellian alone in her bed.

She hoped the warm water of the shower would wash away all the strange feelings and thoughts she was experiencing, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. She was just as confused when she got out and the pleasing aroma of freshly-brewed caf immediately hit her nose. But when Rylan greeted her in the kitchen with a smile and a plate of breakfast, Cara pushed aside all the confusion and made a vow to follow her advice and just not think anymore.

“Hope you weren’t saving this stuff for a special occasion,” the pilot said of the food as they sat down to eat.

“To be honest, I didn’t even know I had most of this,” Cara replied. “Glad someone’s made good use of it.”

“Well, don’t give me too much credit until you try it,” Rylan said, a smirk sneaking across her face. “I’m not quite as good in the kitchen as I am in other rooms.”

The bounty hunter rolled her eyes. “If you’re half as good a cook as you are a cocky little shit I think it’ll be okay.”

In truth, “okay” was really the only way to describe Rylan’s breakfast-making skills, they soon found out. But they’d both had much worse meals, so they didn’t complain. Instead they fell into the same easy conversation they’d enjoyed the night before, and the smuggler finally filled Cara in on the details of why she’d been wanted by the Hutts in the first place. 

It was nothing spectacular. She’d had to drop a load of their illegal cargo when she’d been unexpectedly cornered by a New Republic patrol, gambling that it would be better to take her chances with the gangsters than go straight to prison for hauling illicit materials. She admitted to feeling like the luckiest person in the galaxy that it had been Cara who’d tracked her down on Lothal. Almost any other hunter and she’d now be a carbonite decoration hanging on some fat slug’s wall.

“That definitely would have been a waste of your talents,” Cara joked.

“I’m glad we agree on that,” Rylan said with a grin. “Can’t wait to get back to my main talent. Haven’t been away from my ship this long since I got her.”

Cara resented the disappointed reaction she had to hearing that the pilot couldn’t wait to get away from her. Thankfully, that reaction had stayed internal.

“Well I’m sorry to have kept you two apart,” she teased. “If you want, I can take you back to Lothal before I go on to Nevarro.”

Rylan appeared just as surprised by that offer as Cara was that she’d made it. “Nah, you don’t have to do that,” she waved her off. “I get the feeling I’ve already well overstayed the standard welcome on this particular ship.”

“Yeah,” Cara confirmed. “But I’m trying not to think about it.”

~

The ride to Lothal was a bumpy one. Cara’s hand-me-down ship courtesy of the Guild was a real piece of junk, and she wasn’t enough of a mechanic nor a pilot to be flying the blasted thing in the first place.

When the hyperdrive gave out and dropped them dangerously out of lightspeed an hour too early, she thanked the stars Rylan was there to both diagnose the problem and take over flying. The smuggler cursed profusely the whole rest of the trip, lamenting the engineering of the ship that clearly hadn’t been built on her homeworld.

“Next time, buy Corellian,” she advised as she finally guided them to a less than steady landing on Lothal. They went together from the cockpit to the engine room, where Rylan continued to curse. “Yeah, you’re not getting far with this thing anytime soon. Not unless you put a whole new hyperdrive in it.”

“And….I’m guessing from all the dirty words that that’s not as easy as it sounds?”

“Ease isn’t the problem,” Rylan informed her. “The problem is that it would eat up about half that big bounty you’ve got coming. Hyperdrives ain’t cheap.”

“So, what, I’m stuck here?” Cara inquired, growing as annoyed as the Corellian seemed to be.

“Unless you’ve got a chest full of credits stashed away in here somewhere, I’d say yeah,” she said, knowing Cara did not. She scratched her head with a now-dirty hand. “Or….if you’re not completely sick of my company yet, I could give _you_ a ride this time.”

Cara shrugged sarcastically. “I wouldn’t say ‘completely’ sick….”

Rylan snorted. “Right.”

The bounty hunter regarded her offer carefully. Yet again they had an opportunity to part ways, and yet again they were about to avoid doing so. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be? A job to do?”

“I mean….no? I’m unemployable by anyone related to the Hutts, which happens to be a lot of people in this sector.”

“Good point.”

“Yeah. So, the _Echo_ ’s open for business,” Rylan said with an inviting smile.

“The _Echo_?” Cara questioned. “What, is it hollow inside?”

The pilot rolled her eyes. “I’m not the one that named her. But fortunately for you, yes actually. Plenty of room for you and all your stuff.”

Cara eventually agreed and together they moved said stuff from one ship to another. Some time later they were taking off again, the bounty hunter insisting she really didn’t give a damn whether or not the piece of junk ship they left behind got stolen or looted for parts. The indifference was completely foreign to the lifelong pilot, but she tried not to let it offend her.

When they got closer to Nevarro, Cara radioed ahead to Greef Karga to let him know she’d be coming in on a different ship. He was there to greet them personally as they landed just outside the town.

“I knew it!” he called excitedly to them as they descended the ramp off the ship, carbonite Trager in tow. “I knew Carasynthia Dune would make one impressive bounty hunter!”

“Carasynthia?” Rylan questioned under her breath before Karga was close enough to hear. “You’re quite a mouthful.”

She waggled her eyebrows suggestively and Cara fought the urge to punch her in the ribs. “Do not.”

The pilot bit back her laughter as the Guild leader approached. He congratulated Cara on landing the Trager bounty, obviously thrilled at the sizable commission he stood to make from it.

“This is the biggest score anyone’s brought in since Mando and the chi--” Cara cut him off with a cough and a look, and he realized what he’d been about to give away in front of a complete stranger. “Well anyway, who’s your friend here?”

“This is Rylan Killis.”

“Pleasure,” the Corellian said, reaching to shake his hand.

“Rylan….” Karga repeated as they shook, remembering the name as the one he’d given Cara when she’d left. “Now, wait a second…”

“Drop it, Greef,” Cara warned. “If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have this big score.”

Karga eyed the two of them suspiciously before breaking into a wide smile. “Well, then I guess a thank you is in order! Let’s go into town and get you both a drink. Have you ever tried spotchka, Rylan?”

Cara rolled her eyes and fell into step behind them as Karga led the pilot off toward the town. She didn’t exactly love being back. They’d rid the place of Imps and fixed up most of the damage since the job with Mando had gone down, but there were still plenty of reminders of how badly it could have gone. Karga led them straight into one of those reminders, apparently not fazed by how close they’d come to dying in the common house.

The three of them sat down in it and shared a few drinks, replaying the events that had led them there -- minus the intimate details, of course. It didn’t take long for Cara to grow weary of the conversation. Not that she was very much involved in it past a certain point -- Rylan and Greef were perhaps the two chattiest people she’d ever met, so there wasn’t much room for her to get a word in edgewise. It wasn’t until Karga asked the pilot what her next move would be and she replied that she didn’t have one that Cara found herself interested in what they were saying.

“Well, if I may make an observation,” the Guild leader said, “it seems to me that you two make a fine team. Perhaps you’d be interested in joining our former shock trooper here on her next excursion?”

Rylan turned her head to look questioningly at the bounty hunter, who simply sipped her drink with a straight face. 

“Hey, I’m up for anything,” she said. “But that’s gonna be up to Cara. She may be tired of me hangin’ around.”

Cara looked back at her, still stone-faced. “I’m getting used to it.”

The two of them returned to the Echo after Karga had successfully paired them up as a crew and at long last grew tired of talking. Rylan assumed Cara would gather her things to take back to the apartment she called home, but as soon as they entered the ship, the bounty hunter cornered her.

“Look, if we’re gonna work together, I think we need to talk about….what this is,” she said, gesturing between them.

“Uhh, okay….” Rylan replied, thoroughly caught off-guard.

“I’m not used to keeping someone around for more than one night,” Cara said honestly, and the pilot laughed.

“Yeah, I got that impression,” she said. “Neither am I, for the record.”

“Okay, then, it should be easy to keep this….simple.”

“Simple as in….?”

“As in, we don’t ask each other for more than what we’re already getting,” Cara said. “As in, we don’t expect anything from each other.”

Her implication was clear: no feelings, no complications.

“I see,” Rylan said, nodding slowly. “Simple….I think I can handle that.”

“Good. Because I like what we’ve been doing,” Cara said, and the Corellian hummed in agreement. “And I think, you could be a good friend, or crewmate, or whatever.”

“Likewise.”

“So let’s not mess that up,” the hunter said in a somewhat demanding tone.

“I agree,” Rylan replied with a soft smile.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeated. When Cara didn’t say any more, she regarded the conversation as put to rest and gestured toward the ship’s sleeping quarters with a smirk. “So, you wanna…?”

“Yes.” Cara answered, grabbing the pilot by the jacket before she even finished the question. “Yes, I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think my next fic will just be Greef Karga talking. I enjoy having Carl Weathers's voice in my head.
> 
> Please comment if you like!


	3. The Rules

It only took a few months for Cara and Rylan to make a name for themselves as the best bounty hunting team the Guild had to offer. Granted, most other hunters didn’t work in teams, but still, they produced better and quicker results than any two of Karga’s other employees combined.

They worked with the precision and discipline of the former soldiers that they were. They were smart, adaptable, and worked incredibly well together. Most importantly, they followed the rules. The rules of the bounty hunters’ code, and their own.

Their rules for themselves were simple enough. Outside the ship, they were professionals, coworkers. Inside, their relationship was purely physical. They each had their own space and kept to it when they weren’t tangled together for an hour or a night or however long it took. There were no feelings, or if there were, they certainly weren’t discussed. They had started to talk about more than just their respective experiences in the war, but most of the conversations stayed safely at the surface level. Rylan still didn’t even know what planet Cara called home, but she wasn’t about to pry. That was another rule.

It wasn’t that Cara didn’t trust her enough to tell her things. On the contrary, she trusted the pilot with her life, especially after a particularly interesting job on Ord Mantell almost cut their partnership short. She just didn’t trust herself. She knew that the more she opened up, the more she let her guard down in the presence of those welcoming blue eyes, the easier it would be to break their rules. And the rules were all that kept them safe.

The first time she was tempted to break the rules was when Rylan caught her trying to check in on Mando again. She never actually expected him to answer -- he hadn’t any of the other times -- but she’d developed a habit of trying anyway.

She heard the pilot gasp behind her back as she hung up the comm. “Do you have a secret family somewhere?” she asked sarcastically. “Is that why we can’t be more? I’m just your mistress?”

Cara turned around to find her smirking and glared at her playfully. “Yes, you caught me. I’ve been married for 10 years, have three kids, and have abandoned them all to travel the galaxy and have an affair with you.”

Rylan laughed then placed a hand over her heart. “Wow, I am so honored.”

“You should be,” Cara said for the sake of the joke, then grew serious. “Actually, that’s just a friend I helped a while back. I just wish I knew how his mission is going.”

The pilot tilted her head at the new information. “Okay….for the record, I did not ask.”

“I know,” Cara replied. If anyone had just toed the line, it wasn’t Rylan. “Forget I said anything.”

And for all Cara knew, she did.

The second time they played fast and loose with the rules, it had been much more deliberate on Cara’s part. At least at first.

After she’d caught herself slipping on the Mando thing, she’d started to wonder about what sort of similar secrets Rylan might have. She wasn’t really tempted to ask -- in fact, they’d both agreed there was something sexy about having secrets from each other, but it didn’t stop her from wondering.

They were lying lazily in the pilot’s bed after their usual ritual of unwinding from a stressful job. Rylan was facedown, half asleep with her back exposed, and for the first time Cara noticed a faint scar on her shoulder blade, very similar to the one on her own side. She grazed her fingers over it lightly and the Corellian gasped awake.

“Hey, that tickles,” she mumbled.

Cara chuckled, suddenly wondering where else she was ticklish. “Sorry,” she said, but continued to let her hand linger on the scar. “Is this from the war? Didn’t think a pilot could get shot in the back.”

“Kind of can’t. And it’s not,” Rylan replied simply.

“From after?”

The pilot sighed heavily before answering. “No. Before. On Corellia.”

“What happened?” Cara asked.

Rylan finally removed her face from her pillow and looked up at her. “Pretty sure answering that would be against the rules.”

She was probably right, but Cara couldn’t help herself. She shrugged. “I showed you mine.”

The Corellian stared at her, searching her dark eyes for a hint of humor or doubt. Finding none, she sighed again. “Have you ever heard of the White Worms?”

Cara shook her head. “They don’t sound pleasant.”

“Definitely not,” Rylan agreed. “They run the criminal underground on Corellia. Any illegal activity you can think of, they’ve got their hands in it. But they stay out of trouble because they never do anything directly. They’ve got basically an army of kids to do their dirty work. Scrumrats, they’re called. Mostly orphans they pick up and offer protection to.”

She paused, and Cara filled the silence with a question. “And one of them shot you?”

“Technically yes,” Rylan said with a slight chuckle. “But also I was one. A scrumrat, not an orphan. In fact, _my_ lovely parents sold me to the worms to pay off their debts, so that was….special.”

The memory was clearly a painful one, and Cara felt a pang of guilt for asking the questions that led to it. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah….” the pilot said distantly. “I guess our scars are similar in a way. Yours saved your life, mine saved me from that.”

“How so?”

“Well, you see,” Rylan said, smiling slightly as she looked up at Cara, “there was this girl.”

“You got shot for a girl?” It was exactly the type of story that confirmed the need for rules, Cara thought. Getting shot looking out for yourself was one thing. To increase the risk because of your feelings for someone else was just crazy.

“I got shot trying to escape,” the pilot explained, “with a girl.” She grew quiet again and Cara was prepared to leave it at that, but then she kept going, her voice and eyes distant. “Her name was Bria. She was the first girl I ever….loved, I guess. Seems crazy now, I mean we were just kids. Both grew up as scrumrats, didn’t know anything about any other kind of life, but we knew anything would be better than that. So one day we just, made a run for it. Almost made it to a shipyard to steal one before they caught up to us.”

She laughed sadly, and Cara felt her own chest tighten with sadness for her.

“They shot me first,” Rylan said, closing her eyes at the memory of getting the scar Cara’s hand still hovered over. “It wouldn’t have slowed us down much if it was just that. But then they got Bria, and she….she died right there, in my arms….”

“Ry, I’m….I’m so sorry.”

The Corellian nodded, choosing to ignore the nickname just used on her for the first time. “The police showed up right then and arrested them. Took me to get patched up at a hospital. Next thing I know I’m being recruited by the Alliance and leaving Corellia. So I got what I always wanted, just….not how I wanted it.”

“Have you been back?”

She shook her head. “Nothing there for me anymore.”

It saddened Cara to hear that. Rylan’s home world was still there, she could go back to it any time, but she had no reason to want to. All she’d ever known there was betrayal and loss. Cara had always been something of an outsider on Alderaan, sure, but it had never stopped her from living a good life there. She couldn’t imagine not wanting to go back home, or going even a day without missing it. She’d lost her planet unwillingly, along with all the good memories from it. Rylan had lost hers on purpose, because there weren’t good memories. In that moment, Cara wasn’t sure which was worse.

Rylan moved out from under her touch, sitting up and putting on the nearest shirt from off the floor, suddenly feeling too exposed in more than one way. She plastered on a smile as best she could, her only natural defense against the desire to show her real feelings. “That was probably a little more information than you were expecting, huh?”

“Just a little,” Cara admitted, though for some reason she found she was glad she now had it.

“Sorry. I’ll try to keep it locked down from now on,” Ry said. “Under one condition.”

“Shoot.”

The pilot bit her lip, considering the trouble she could get in for what she was about to request. “Will you tell me where you’re from?”

Cara sighed. It was a more than fair question for Rylan to ask after what she’d just revealed about herself. But only because she didn’t realize what had kept the bounty hunter from telling her thus far, what kept her from talking about it with anyone.

“Only if you promise not to react the way everybody reacts,” she said finally.

The pilot’s brow furrowed in confusion. “How am I supposed to know how everybody reacts?”

“You’ll know when I tell you.”

No less confused, Rylan agreed. “Yeah, okay. I promise.”

Cara broke contact with the probing blue eyes so she could give them the answer they sought. “Alderaan. I’m from Alderaan.”

True to her word, Rylan fought hard against her natural reaction, which was to say something sympathetic and soothing, not that she knew what that could possibly be. She also felt the urge to hug her, to hold her and protect her from some unseen enemy, but she knew that was exactly the wrong thing to do when it came to Cara Dune.

The Corellian opened and closed her mouth multiple times before finally speaking. “Well, that makes me want to go to war all over again,” she said honestly, forcing a supportive smile.

“You and me both,” Cara said. Sometimes she wished the war had never ended. It was the only thing that gave her life purpose, fighting the Empire with everything she had and doing anything she could to make every single Imp suffer for what they’d done to her home.

“I feel like I need to say more, but I don’t know what,” Rylan said.

“You don’t have to. Whatever you do, don’t give me any pity.”

“Is that what you think it is?” she asked, and Cara looked at her questioningly. “People’s first reaction. You think it’s pity?”

“Isn’t it?” Cara couldn’t think of a single person who’d found out where she was from and didn’t treat her differently afterwards, like she was some fragile, sad thing. That was the whole reason she didn’t talk about it. She couldn’t have Rylan doing the same. That would ruin everything.

“No, Cara, it’s not. It’s just….sympathy. It’s….” the pilot searched around for the right words. “It’s trying to share some of your pain. So you don’t have to carry it by yourself.”

“I don’t need anybody to do that,” the Alderaanian said, looking away.

“I know,” Rylan replied and reached up to turn her face back to look at her. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let them try. It’s no different than what you just did for me. It’s alright if every once in a while someone wants to tell you they’re sorry you had to go through something. Especially since the people that put you through it definitely aren’t going to.”

Cara’s eyes watered as Rylan’s bore into them with an ocean of feeling.

“I’m sorry, Cara,” the Corellian said sincerely, holding her face and wiping away the single tear that fell over her Alliance tattoo. “I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, Cara could only think of the rules. They were breaking them wide open talking this way, and she knew that what she should do was leave, go back to her own bunk and forget the whole conversation ever took place.

But the line was so far behind them already. And she needed just a little more from this moment.

Cara buried her face in Rylan’s chest, and the Corellian wrapped her in her arms without missing a beat. It was far from the first time those arms had held her, but it was so different from the way they usually did. There was no need, no desire. This time the embrace was selfless, giving, protective.

It broke every rule all at once. But Cara didn’t want it to end.

They fell asleep that way, and when the Alderaanian woke up the next morning alone in Rylan’s bed, she tried to convince herself she wasn’t disappointed.

~

Even weeks after the night they broke all the rules, Rylan still couldn’t get it out of her head.

She’d fallen asleep that night long after Cara had drifted off in her arms, her mind racing with all the implications of what had happened, and had come to the conclusion that the other woman would likely regret it deeply in the morning. So when she woke up first, she’d carefully removed herself from the bed without waking her, knowing it would be easier for them both to process it separately.

That must have been the right move, because nothing changed. Neither of them ever brought up what happened or the things they’d talked about, and their partnership kept humming along just as smoothly as it always had.

But in her quiet moments alone, Rylan couldn’t help but think about that night. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to really know Cara, to see the parts of her she kept so tightly hidden away. She couldn’t help but want to hold her again for real.

Rylan sat alone in the cockpit of the _Echo_ on their way to some planet or another, quietly musing about all of that when a mechanical voice from the console broke through to her consciousness. It was garbled and she couldn’t understand what it had said, so she radioed back to get them to repeat but got no answer.

When the voice came back again, she realized it wasn’t coming from the ship’s communication lines at all, but rather from the handheld comm Cara used for just one purpose as far as she knew.

“Uhh, Cara!” Rylan yelled to the back of the ship. “Your secret family is calling!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's coming up in the next chapter....


	4. The Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised, we finally meet up with some familiar faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope folks are liking this! I'm already started on something new that I may or may not start posting once this is all the way out.

The prospect of meeting back up with Mando and the kid provided a welcome distraction for Cara’s mind. It had been weeks since she and Ry had opened up to each other more than they ever intended to, and although neither of them had addressed it, she found herself thinking about it every day, wondering how things would be different now if Rylan had been there when she’d woken up that morning. Hopefully, she thought, the galaxy’s weirdest little family would give her a reason to think about something else for a while.

They’d agreed to rendezvous on Sorgan, as Mando seemed unwilling to return to Nevarro with the little one any time soon. Cara instructed Rylan -- who was confused but agreeable -- to land the ship near the village they’d saved from the raiders. When they’d left there the first time, Omera had sent them away with an offer to come back someday, and neither of them had expected to be able to take her up on it. But Cara was glad to have the chance now.

Mando had arrived first, and all the village kids were already gathered around his little one when she and Rylan touched down in the _Echo_.

“So, do I get to know what’s going on here, or am I supposed to stay on the ship?” the Corellian asked.

Cara shrugged. “I’m not gonna tell you where you can and can’t go.”

“Okay but that doesn’t tell me anything about why we’re here.”

“It’s….hard to explain,” the Alderaanian said and left the cockpit without any more clarification.

“You didn’t even try!”

“Just come on!”

Rylan followed her off the ship and into one of the strangest scenes she’d ever come across in her life. An armor-clad Mandalorian chatted idly with a native woman, while nearby a dozen children watched with disgust as a little green alien dressed in a sack scarfed down a frog whole.

“Okay. Hard to explain,” she whispered to her counterpart as they approached. “Now I get it.”

Cara ignored her as she greeted the Mandalorian with a firm handshake and the woman with a brief hug, which the pilot might have found strange if she didn’t then bend down to rub one of the long, pointy ears of the alien baby being held by a young girl.

Finally she made introductions.

“Ry, this is Mando,” she began, continuing to use the moniker even though she’d learned his real name, “Omera, and Winta. And this little guy is….?”

She looked to Mando for an answer, but he just shrugged. “He’s the kid.”

“He’s the kid,” Cara repeated. “And, everybody, this is Rylan. We’re, uh, business partners.”

The Mandalorian nodded silently at the pilot, and Omera offered her a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Rylan.”

“Likewise,” the Corellian agreed with her usual charming smile. “You have a lovely home.”

“Well, it’s not much. But we’re thankful every day,” the woman said with an appreciative look at both Cara and Mando.

After some small talk, the Alderaanian and Mandalorian were dragged off to catch up with some other residents of the village, and Omera invited Rylan to join her for a cup of spotchka. They sat together, drinking and watching the kids play while the mother recounted the story of defending the village against the raiders and the AT-ST. It was an impressive tale, and Rylan realized quickly how Cara had formed such a strong bond with the Mandalorian. The baby was still a mystery, but she figured that explanation would come in time.

“So, how long have you and Cara been working together?” Omera asked after her story.

“Oh, just a few months,” the pilot responded. It had felt much longer, and she found she hadn’t missed her old job or life at all over that time.

“I was surprised when she showed up with someone. She always struck me as the type to prefer to work alone,” the villager observed.

Rylan laughed. “Yeah, she is. We just, uh….we work well together, and I had a ship that actually flies.”

She realized she couldn’t really tell the whole story of how they’d started working together without going into details she’d rather not share with a stranger. Although between Omera’s welcoming personality and the potency of the spotchka, there was a danger of that happening whether she wanted it to or not.

“Well I’m glad someone’s got her back out there,” Omera said. “She’s a special person.”

Rylan’s eyes reflexively found Cara across the krill ponds and she couldn’t help but smile as she watched her laugh with the villagers she’d helped protect.

“She sure is,” the pilot agreed, unaware of the knowing look Omera sported as she observed the moment.

Across the ponds, Cara pretended not to notice Rylan staring at her as she and Mando were finally left alone to talk. He caught her up on how his mission was going -- in short, not well -- before acknowledging the presence of her new companion.

“I didn’t know you’d be bringing someone,” the Mandalorian told her in his mechanical voice.

“What, did you think you were my only friend in the galaxy?”

“It wouldn’t have surprised me.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Okay, I guess you were before I met her,” she conceded. “Is it gonna be a problem?”

His situation was a sensitive one, and Cara wanted to give him the chance to object before she brought another person in on it.

“You tell me,” he answered.

She looked over at the pilot, who quickly diverted her own gaze when she realized she’d been caught staring. Cara laughed inwardly and shook her head. “You can trust her.”

“Alright.” Mando was a man of few words, something Cara definitely couldn’t say about her new partner.

“In fact she might be able to help. She’s got contacts in all sorts of unexpected places,” she informed him. Rylan’s habit of charming everyone she met had gained her friends and allies all across the galaxy, it seemed. And her extensive list of contacts had already proven useful in helping them secure a couple of tougher bounties. If anybody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew something about how to find the kid’s people, it would be the pilot.

So the two of them rejoined Rylan and Omera and proceeded to tell them both the whole story of the kid, the Imps, and the rest of it. The Corellian took it all in rather calmly despite how strange a story it was and how impressed she was that Cara had kept such a wild secret so well. But when they came to the part about the Mandalorian armorer giving Mando the task of finding the kid’s people, the order of sorcerers known as Jedi, her ears perked up.

“Jedi? What, like Luke Skywalker?” she asked.

“Who?” Mando inquired.

“Guy that blew up the first Death Star?” Rylan offered, to no avail. “Hero of the Rebellion?”

“What about him?” Cara asked.

“I flew with him in Rogue Group for a few battles. He was in the middle of Jedi training during the war,” the pilot explained. “I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it had something to do with his weird abilities.”

Cara and Mando shared a knowing look. “Like what?” he implored.

“I dunno, like….he could see stuff before it happened, speak to people who weren’t there, move stuff without touching it…”

“He could move things with his mind?” the Mandalorian asked.

“Yeah. Saw it a few times myself. It was kinda scary, to be honest.”

Cara snorted. “Tell me about it.”

“Do you know where he is?” Mando wanted to know. “How to get in touch with him?”

“No, I haven’t seen him in years,” Rylan admitted. “But I know someone who might.”

The Alderaanian shrugged at her helmeted friend. “What’d I say? Contacts in unexpected places.”

As Rylan soon after went off to the _Echo_ to attempt to get in touch with a fellow Corellian smuggler known as Han Solo on Mando’s behalf, the other three adults continued to sit around and watch the sun set over the village. Before long the kid got fussy though, and the Mandalorian took him inside to put him to bed, leaving Cara and Omera alone on the porch.

“Thanks again for letting us stay here,” Cara said sincerely. She and Rylan would be staying on the ship as usual so as not to take up more room in the woman’s home, but just their presence in the village in the first place was out of the ordinary for the quiet collection of krill farmers.

Omera just smiled at her. “It’s a pleasure to have you back,” she said. “All of you.”

“If you say so,” the Alderaanian laughed. Drama had a tendency to follow Mando and the kid, and the new bounty hunting duo had already seen its share of chaos as well. It would be quite a feat if their whole visit to the quiet little village in fact remained a pleasure. “Hope Ry didn’t talk your ear off earlier.”

“Not at all. In fact it’s nice to have somebody visit who will say more than five words at a time,” Omera said with a grin. She loved having Cara and the Mandalorian back, but they were such a quiet, brooding pair. Rylan was much more her speed.

“Yeah, I’ve never known her to just stick to five words in any situation,” Cara said with a laugh.

“She certainly likes to talk about you.”

The bounty hunter sipped her drink calmly despite the jolt of excitement that inexplicably shot through her. “That right?”

“It is,” the villager confirmed. “Basically all she talked about with me.”

“Well, she hasn’t had much other company for a while,” Cara reasoned.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s why.”

“Talkin’ about me?” Rylan’s voice came from beside them and made Cara jump.

“Did you contact him?” she asked, ignoring the Corellian’s question.

She shook her head. “No answer on his frequency but I sent him a holo. We’ll see if he gets it,” she said, then looked to Omera with a grin. “Were you talkin’ about me?”

“What else would we talk about?” the woman replied with her own grin.

“Great point.”

~

What Rylan had hoped would be a short wait for Solo’s reply turned quickly into a week and then another, during which they all stayed and hung out in the peaceful little village. She and Cara had a surplus of credits and no work that was particularly time-sensitive, so they weren’t in a hurry to leave the beautiful little world anyway.

A large kid in her own right, she’d bonded quickly with Winta and the other village children, as well as Mando’s little womp rat. Cara on the other hand enjoyed the kids from a distance, watching with interest as the Corellian goofed around and played various games with them. She found herself wondering if Rylan had ever gotten to play like that as an actual child, so carefree and happy. With what she knew of her upbringing she doubted it, but she always thought better of it before her curiosity drove her to ask.

Meanwhile she and Mando played games of their own, competing in (and betting on) arm-wrestling matches and other tests of strength. Rylan watched those with just as much interest, always feeling an odd sense of pride when Cara would beat him, which was more often than she’d first anticipated.

A few days in, Rylan had discovered that the best place to watch the sunset from was on top of the _Echo_ , so she and Cara had taken to ending the days there, sipping spotchka and chatting as night fell.

“I think I could get used to this,” the Corellian said one evening.

“Really?” Cara asked. “Thought a pilot like you would need a little more excitement than a place like this has to offer.”

Rylan shrugged. “Eventually, yeah. But right now….this feels pretty much perfect.”

She looked away from the sunset and at her companion with a contented smile. Cara couldn’t argue. Sorgan was beautiful, the village was peaceful, the spotchka was delicious, and the company was….well, the company was Rylan. And she would never complain about that.

“You know, I think Omera thinks we’re together,” she said.

Rylan snorted. “Why? What’d you say to her?”

“What did _I_ say? You’re the one that talks all day long.”

“Well I haven’t said anything,” the Corellian said before scoffing sarcastically. “What could ever give her such a crazy idea?”

“I don’t know,” Cara said.

“I mean, we have rules.”

“We do.”

“And we follow them.”

“Right.”

“Well, except for that one time,” Rylan conceded.

Cara looked at her sideways. “Emphasis on ‘one time.’ Not gonna happen again.”

“Of course,” the pilot agreed. “Because that would be….bad…?”

The Alderaanian sighed. “Yes, it would be bad.”

“Why?”

“Ry, you know why,” she said.

“Because we’re….professionals. And...friends.”

“Yes.”

“Who also sleep together.”

“Right.”

“But we’re not actually together. Because….”

Cara was growing wary of the conversation. She didn’t understand where this sudden boldness had come from in her partner, why she suddenly sounded unsatisfied with their arrangement. “Because it’s easier this way, remember?”

“Is it? I think being honest with each other would be easier than this,” Rylan said, a hint of fatigue in her voice that Cara didn’t recognize.

“Don’t do this, Ry. I know you know why it has to be this way.” She prayed the Corellian wouldn’t make her say it. That she wouldn’t make her say she was scared. That she wouldn’t make her say she couldn’t bear to feel more for her because she had already lost everyone she’d ever cared about, and she wouldn’t be able to live through it happening again. Rylan should understand that, she thought. After all, she’d lost someone she loved too.

Ry didn’t make her say it. Instead she looked away and back to the setting sun.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head and forcing a smile. “Must be the spotchka talking.”

It was far from convincing, but Cara gave her the out anyway. “It’s okay. You wanna….go back to my bunk?” she asked, flipping the switch from serious to seductive quicker than she even knew she could.

But Rylan just sighed. “Nah, I’m….I’m kinda tired. Think I’m just gonna call it a night.”

She dumped the rest of her drink off the side of the ship and climbed down without another word, leaving Cara more alone and confused than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to name the kid or use Mando's real name for some reason.


	5. Hold On

Unlike the time they’d first broken the rules, things did change after their talk on top of the _Echo_.

Rylan was distant, quiet for once in her life and apparently uninterested in their usual nighttime activities. She wore herself out playing with the kids every day, then retreated to the ship in the evenings to “keep trying to make contact with Solo” before going to bed early.

Omera asked Cara a few times if the Corellian was okay, and she assured her she was, even though she wasn’t actually sure herself. But when even Mando noticed something was off, it felt like a bit of a wake-up call.

“You two have a fight?” he’d asked, and Cara had to admit -- even if just to herself -- that it certainly felt like they had.

Not that that helped her understand why. Everything had been going great, why had Rylan tried to push her? She knew the rules, she knew the line. Had Cara given her some kind of signal that she was open to changing something? And what was up with the cold shoulder afterward? Anytime they’d had an issue before, it had always been quickly forgotten.

Just as she was working up the nerve to confront her partner about it all, Solo finally made contact and their spat had to take a backseat to more pressing matters. The former Rebellion general had told Rylan he wasn’t going to give out Luke’s information to just anyone but agreed he and Leia could meet with them to assess the situation. And so Mando and the baby were to follow her and Cara to Hosnian Prime for what they hoped would be a very productive meeting.

They all said their goodbyes to Omera, Winta, and the other villagers and boarded their respective ships for the journey, each of them slightly (and quietly) sad about leaving. Rylan was excited to get back in the air, however, and was in much better spirits than she had been for a few days as she piloted the _Echo_ into space. Cara appreciated how normal it felt, even though the stress of the previous episode still weighed on her mind.

The Corellian made the jump to lightspeed and set a course for the Hosnian system on the autopilot, happily looking forward to reuniting with both Han and Leia. The bounty hunting duo would arrive a few days before Mando, who’d opted to take a longer route there and stay off the grid, so Rylan hoped there would be time to have some fun before they got down to business.

Suddenly in a good mood again, she realized she owed Cara an apology for the foul one she’d been in over the last few days. She left the cockpit and found the Alderaanian in the ship’s common area cleaning her blaster, something Rylan had long ago realized was a nervous habit of hers.

“Hey,” the pilot said, leaning in the doorway a safe distance from her partner.

“Yeah?” Cara asked expectantly, as if waiting for Rylan to ask her to do something.

“Safe to enter the armory?”

She looked up from her task to see the Corellian nervously waiting with her hands plunged deep in her pockets. “It’s your ship.”

“Aw, come on. She’s just as much yours anymore. I mean look at all your shit everywhere,” she grinned and gestured at the array of other blasters and weapons Cara had left around the room.

“Do you want something, or…?” the Alderaanian asked, confused by the sudden attention she was getting after days of the silent treatment.

“Yeah,” Rylan said. “I want to….apologize. For being in such a bitchy mood lately. I’m sorry.”

Cara considered her for a moment, then just shrugged. “It’s fine, Ry.”

“No, it’s not,” she protested. “I tried to break the rules and then acted like a child when you made me follow them. It wasn’t fair to you.”

“It’s _fine_ , Ry,” Cara repeated, rising to set the blaster on a counter and pick up another one to polish.

The Corellian followed her, standing behind her as her hands hovered over the weapons. She covered one of the hands with her own and pressed herself into her back. “Good. ‘Cause I’ve missed you,” she whispered in her ear.

Cara turned around to find her eyes dark with a familiar desire and had to fight the urge to sigh in relief. “I’ve missed you too,” she said, and pulled her into a kiss that turned quickly into something far less innocent.

What she didn’t say, what neither of them said, was that they’d been missing each other for far more than just that.

~

By the time they were making their approach to Hosnian Prime, Cara was feeling confident that things were back to normal between them.

They’d spent basically the entire hyperspace trip in bed making up for lost time, and now Rylan was again her chatty old self, yapping nonstop about how excited she was to meet back up with Solo, whom she’d admired ever since they were both scrumrats on Corellia and he was known simply as Han.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’ve got a crush on this guy,” Cara teased as they neared the planet’s surface.

Rylan frowned disgustedly. “Gross, Cara. Don’t ever say something like that about me again,” she said. “Now his wife, on the other hand….”

“For kriff’s sake Rylan Killis, please do not flirt with Leia when we get there. I’m begging you.” It was going to be weird enough for Cara to see the Alderaanian princess up close in person for the first time. The last thing she wanted was to have to rein in her overly-friendly partner while doing so, especially with the woman’s husband right there.

“Not to worry,” the Corellian promised as she gracefully brought down the ship on the landing platform. “There’s only one Alderaanian I’m interested in flirting with these days.”

Cara looked at her with disapproval but couldn’t completely fight off the smile that graced her lips.

They exited the ship and were greeted by a much more normal-looking family than the one they'd soon be waiting for. Han stepped forward to shake hands with his fellow Corellian while Leia looked on, a dark-haired toddler quietly holding her hand beside her. For the briefest of moments an insane thought crossed Cara’s mind, that Han and Leia were some alternate version of Rylan and herself. A Corellian and an Alderaanian, partners.

But their relationship was nothing like this family’s. So she forced the thought out of her head.

Over the next few hours, however, it became evident that she was more right than she’d thought. Leia, like Cara, was quiet and calculating, smart and fierce. And Han wasn’t quite as talkative as Rylan, but he had the same confident attitude, the same easy smile, and the same passion for adventure in the cockpit of a ship. It only took a day for him to challenge Rylan to a race, and all of half a second for her to accept. As the two of them rushed off to take their respective ships to a track Han frequented, Leia rolled her eyes in Cara’s direction.

“Pilots,” she said.

The bounty hunter laughed knowingly. “Corellians.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Leia decided. “Gotta love ‘em, though.”

“Yeah,” Cara agreed reflexively, then realized what she’d just said. “Oh but, I mean, Ry and I are just partners. Business partners.”

“Oh,” the princess said, genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry, I just assumed. You two seem so close.”

“Well we’re....we’re friends too,” Cara stammered.

“You don’t have to explain, it’s none of my business.”

Leia let her off the hook, but Cara couldn’t help but wonder what she’d seen in such a short time with them already. Rather than dwell on it, though, she abruptly changed the subject. 

“I just have to say, it’s such an honor to meet you,” she told the princess. “When I was little, my parents used to bring me to the parade on Life Day, and seeing you at the palace was always the thing I ended up talking about for days afterward.”

Leia smiled at her warmly. “You’re from Alderaan?”

Cara nodded. She hadn’t spoken to anyone else from her home planet since the end of the war, and even during the war she hadn’t met many other survivors. She knew they were out there. A good number of them had set up a new colony for themselves and plenty of others had found refuge on other worlds, but she’d never had the desire to seek them out. She’d worried it would only make her miss her lost family and friends even more. And in speaking to Leia, she found she’d been right. Cara was generally good at pushing away her memories of home, but apparently not in such close proximity to someone who shared them.

Somehow Leia could sense that, and she listened while the bounty hunter spoke about her family, her story of surviving, and anything else she couldn’t stop herself from sharing. Then she shared all her own memories and stories, and Cara listened just as intently. It was cathartic, therapeutic in a way. For just a little while, they let themselves feel connected to their home again, and it was beautiful.

But eventually the sadness set in again and Cara started to withdraw from the conversation. Leia sensed it and looked at her with an empathetic smile as her son, Ben, climbed into her lap and laid there.

“I know how much it hurts,” she said sadly. “How much anger there is. You start to think it’ll go away eventually, but it never does, does it? The only way through it is just to focus on what’s ahead instead of what’s behind. And work on making the good feelings count for more than the bad ones.”

“How do you do that?” Cara asked quietly, not even sure if there was an answer.

But Leia responded without hesitation as she hugged her son closer. “You hold on to the people you love.”

Cara didn’t have much time to let that advice scare her because, as if on cue, Han and Rylan returned just then and found the two women sitting right where they’d left them. Leia stood with Ben and greeted her husband with a kiss before taking the boy off to bed.

Rylan leaned down with her elbows on the back of the couch Cara was seated on and grinned at her, clearly in a good mood after their race. “Miss me?”

“Oh, were you gone? Should have known, it was so quiet,” she said, and the pilot rolled her eyes. “Did you win?”

“No,” Han answered for her.

“He cheated,” Rylan said, starting to explain how before Cara cut her off with a finger on her lips.

“I do not care.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Just needed to know if I should be looking for a partner with a faster ship and better skills,” she teased.

Han laughed from across the room then smirked at his fellow pilot. “I like this one.”

Rylan shook her head. “Alderaanians.”

“What was that, Captain?” Leia asked as she rejoined the rest of them in the sitting room.

“Not a thing, General,” the pilot said, embarrassed to have been caught by her former commanding officer.

“Insubordination,” Cara said through a fake cough.

Ry pointed in a mock threat at her, a grin giving her seriousness away. “Watch yourself, trooper.”

Across the room, Han and Leia shared a look as they both came to the same conclusion about the other Corellian and Alderaanian pair.

~

The bed Cara had been offered at Han and Leia’s was without a doubt much more comfortable than the small bunk she was used to on the _Echo_. Unfortunately she was more accustomed to the discomfort, however, and found it impossible to fall asleep in the cloud-like mattress the Solos had provided.

At least that was the reason Cara would give anyone who called her out, she decided as she quietly left their guest room and made her way out to the ship. She’d had enough of the tossing and turning, and the racing of her mind, which seemed determined to make her reckon with Leia’s assumption that she and Rylan were an item.

Rather than going to crash in her own bunk she went straight for the pilot’s room, rapping lightly on the door and opening it when she heard a grunt of acknowledgement.

“What’s wrong?” the Corellian muttered sleepily as Cara entered.

“Nothing, just can’t sleep.”

“So you did miss me,” Rylan said with a tired grin. She’d clearly been asleep already, which was unsurprising considering they’d all gone to bed hours ago.

“What can I say, I’ve gotten used to a certain amount of activity before bed,” Cara said suggestively, slipping under the covers and immediately feeling grateful for the warmth Rylan’s body had built up there.

“Mmmhm,” the pilot purred and wrapped her arms around the Alderaanian before falling immediately back to sleep.

“Um, Ry?”

“Hmm?”

“I think you skipped a few steps,” Cara said, kissing Rylan’s neck in the spot she knew drove her wild in an attempt to get a rise out of her.

“You go, I’ll catch up,” she slurred.

Cara shook her head. The Corellian was clearly too far gone to wake up as much as she needed her to. Her disappointment only lasted a moment, though, as Rylan’s soft embrace and steady heartbeat soothed her right to sleep herself.

The Alderaanian woke first the next morning, still wrapped securely in her partner’s arms, feeling more rested than she had in days despite the hours awake the night before.

She looked up at the pilot’s face as she slept on peacefully, the early Hosnian sunlight shining warmly through the window and her mess of golden hair. It was a beautiful sight and it should have made her happy, but Cara felt her stomach churn with uncertainty.

Leia’s words swam through her mind. _You hold on to the people you love_. Is that what Rylan was doing right now? Logically, Cara knew they’d only ended up asleep together like that because she’d tried too late to wake her up, but what if there was more to it? After all, the Corellian had been hinting at wanting more just days earlier. What was it she’d said? It would be easier to be honest with each other? What did Rylan feel they weren’t being honest about?

It had all started out so simply. No feelings, no complications. Now she wondered if that had ever been true, or if it was just what they’d told themselves. If she was being honest, really honest, Cara knew that she’d felt something for Ry since the day they’d met. She wouldn’t have saved her ass, wouldn’t have kept her around, if not for that.

But was it more than just a physical attraction? More than just a weakness for her charm? Had the Corellian really found a way into her heart, past all the armor and the walls that guarded it?

_So what if she did?_ she let herself think for just a moment. _What’s the worst that could happen?_

But Cara already knew the answer. She’d get her heart broken. One way or another, that was the only logical end to any more meaningful relationship between them. Either some tragedy would befall them, as had been the way of things for most of their lives, or Rylan would one day realize that Cara was too broken, too much of a mess to really love.

She felt a clench in her chest at that realization before looking up sadly at her partner’s face again and seeing that Rylan was awake, watching her with a look of awe and affection.

“Hey,” the Corellian said quietly, a soft smile creeping over her face.

“Hey. How long have you been up?” Cara asked, all too aware of her shaky voice.

“Just for a minute,” Ry said, then squinted in confusion and lifted the covers off them to look underneath. To her surprise they were both clothed, which was not how they usually woke up together. “Wait, what happened here?”

“I snuck in during the night to get some but you were so uninterested you fell asleep, that’s what.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” the pilot said with a laugh. “And you stayed anyway?”

“You didn’t really give me a chance to leave.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like you, either,” Rylan said, the affectionate look in her eye only growing more apparent.

Cara had to look away from it. “Well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

“No, but I think I know you better than you think I do.”

“That’s….very confusing.”

“I know. But so is this,” the Corellian said, pointedly looking down at the way they were still cuddled together despite not having done what usually got them there. Cara went to pull away apologetically, but Rylan held her right where she was. “No, don’t go. It’s okay.”

She pushed the stray hair away from her partner’s eye and let her hand linger on the side of her face. Cara froze, lost in the warmth of her deep blue eyes as Rylan brought her face closer and kissed her. Not with the usual desire and need, not with the intent to get anything more. But like there was something she was trying to say, like she could erase all the confusion with one simple act. Like she needed the Alderaanian to know how she really felt about her.

Cara panicked, her realization from moments earlier rushing back to tighten her chest again. She pushed her away gently.

“Don’t do that,” she said in slightly more than a whisper.

“Do what?” Rylan asked innocently.

“Kiss me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you just did,” Cara said, sitting up and away from her. “Like....like you love me or something.”

“What if I do?”

Cara looked at her, looked for a hint that she was kidding. But there wasn’t one. She meant it. And she wasn’t taking it back.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Rylan, we said. We made the rules. We agreed.”

“Well what if I don’t agree anymore?” The question was almost sad, as if she already knew it was a lost cause but couldn’t stop herself from asking, from feeling what she knew she shouldn’t.

“Ry...”

“Cara, I know,” Rylan said, sitting up beside her and reaching for her hand as she looked desperately into her dark eyes. “I know you’re afraid. I can feel it, I can hear it in your voice. Guess what? I’m afraid too. But....why should we let fear tell us what we can and can’t do? Why can’t we just tell it to fuck off?”

Cara felt her eyes burn with tears as the Corellian’s silently pleaded with her. She wanted to agree. She did. She wanted to tell fear that it didn’t control her. She wanted to heed Leia’s words and hold on as tight as she could.

But the voice in her head that said it could only end badly, that it would only lead her to more pain, drowned out all the other voices.

“I....I can’t,” she whispered, rising from the bed and going for the door. “I can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I really need other people to write stuff with Leia and Cara having conversations because that's what I want to read more than anything. Happy to keep doing it myself if I have to though.


	6. Freefall

From the moment Cara left her bed to when they stood awkwardly together to greet the Mandalorian and his kid, Rylan had continuously, silently berated herself for her recklessness.

It had been a full day, and this was the first time they were in the same place since the Corellian had done and said every wrong thing the morning before, causing her partner to run off and not come back until Mando had made contact. Even when he had, Rylan wasn’t sure she’d return. But she should have known Cara would show up for them. The three of them had a bond she just didn’t understand.

They avoided eye contact -- and any other kind of contact -- as the Mandalorian’s gunship set down next to the Corellian freighters on the Solos’ landing pad. The Corellian pilots that owned the ships stood next to each other as they all waited for the new arrivals to emerge, and Han nudged her with his elbow.

“All good?” he asked under his breath.

_Hell no_ , Rylan thought. She’d known what she was risking when she’d kissed Cara, but she couldn’t help herself. She had woken up from what she thought was a perfect dream, only to realize it wasn’t a dream at all. Cara was really there and she was really not leaving and she was so beautiful and Rylan loved her.

She hadn’t meant to fall in love with her, really she hadn’t. She’d meant to follow the rules. It should have been easy -- she’d never had feelings for anyone after losing Bria, never even been tempted. But Cara was always something different. At first she’d thought maybe her feelings were just a result of her tendency to push boundaries, to do what was forbidden. But then they’d grown stronger, and she could no longer deny them, could no longer pretend. Her feelings had gotten too big to ignore anymore, and she’d taken a gamble on admitting them. And lost.

“Yeah. Fine,” she lied to Han. “Actually, I don’t think I’m really needed here. Gonna go hit the track for a while.”

“Hit it as hard as you want,” he said with a confident smirk. “Still not gonna beat me.”

But Rylan wasn’t going with the intention of getting good enough to beat him. She just needed to get away from the awkward situation, from the palpable tension that was taking up the chasm between her and Cara. She needed the clarity she found in the pilot’s seat and nowhere else.

The Corellian took off in the _Echo_ and flew it straight to the stratosphere-level racing course Han had brought her to earlier. She flew one lap after another, each smoother and faster than the last. All the while she replayed her last real interaction with Cara in her mind, over and over, lap after lap.

She was angry. But whether that was directed more toward Cara or herself, she couldn’t quite determine. She was angry at herself for being so stupid, for pushing, for trying to open a door she knew was off-limits. But she was also angry at Cara. For showing up in her bed like that, for being so hard-headed, for denying the obvious truth in front of them.

Consumed by the storm of emotions and thoughts in her head, Rylan pushed the ship harder and harder, gripping the steering handles so tight her fingers began to ache.

_Why can’t she trust me?_

She finished another lap and boosted the thrusters.

_Why doesn’t she want me?_

She banked harder than necessary into a sharp turn.

_Why can’t I let it go?_

Suddenly the ship began to shake violently, pulling her from her thoughts as warning lights and alarms went off on several different monitors in front of her. Rylan backed off the throttle and attempted to steady it out, but the shake continued. High above the surface of the planet, she cursed her own stupidity. Flying that hard and that recklessly, especially without a co-pilot, was asking for trouble.

Then the nose of the VCX plunged severely on its own, and suddenly Rylan was hurtling toward the ground. She flipped every switch she thought might help save her, but to no avail. A full emergency reset was her only option, but the force of the freefall had her stuck in a position where the lever was just out of reach. _Blast it!_

Rylan could see the surface now, speeding up in front of her with the promise of a fiery death. She strained with every ounce of strength she had, reaching for the lever.

Reaching, reachiiinnggg....

_Got it!_

The thrusters kicked back on and in the blink of an eye she straightened out the nose of the ship so it was safely parallel to the ground, just meters above the surface.

Rylan breathed an unsteady sigh of relief and immediately brought the ship down to rest, her hands shaking uncontrollably from the adrenaline and fear. She patted the dashboard affectionately.

“Sorry, girl. Won’t happen again,” she promised the _Echo_ with all sincerity. She wasn’t going to let herself get out of control like that again, wasn’t going to let her feelings get the better of her.

Something had to change.

~

Cara knew she should have been more engaged in the conversation with Mando and the Solos, but she just couldn’t focus.

For more than a day now she’d been thinking, worrying, contemplating, panicking. Mostly she’d been drinking, having left the _Echo_ and headed straight for anywhere that would sell her alcohol early in the morning, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option right now. Instead she just had to sit there, pretending to pay attention while her heart and her brain continued to war with each other. While the content of Rylan’s admission hadn’t been particularly shocking, the timing had caught her off-guard at the worst possible moment.

If Cara was able to do what Ry had told her at the beginning of all of this and just not think, there wouldn’t be a problem. If she could go with what she felt, with the way her heart leapt when Rylan said her name, the way she couldn’t help but smile when the pilot looked at her with those bright blue eyes, they’d be just fine. But when she thought, when she tried to rationalize, it all fell apart. There was no logic in setting yourself up for heartbreak, no reason in volunteering for pain.

Cara was saved from her thoughts as the little green issue at hand toddled over to her and reached out its arms. She picked him up and set him on her knees, facing her. His large black eyes seemed to study her as he tilted his head to one side. With the powers she already knew the kid possessed, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he was reading her thoughts, and she was thankful he couldn’t actually speak. Still, she tried desperately to put her worries out of her mind as she rubbed his ear affectionately.

From what little Cara had gathered from the conversation going on around her, Han and Leia were finding the Mandalorian to be trustworthy enough. Something about his commitment to his creed, to The Way, made people take him seriously. And his mission to bring the kid to the Jedi was, after all, part of that creed. 

Cara had always had her doubts that Mando would actually give the kid up once he found them, even though she wasn’t stupid enough to express those doubts to his face, er, helmet. He had a connection with the little womp rat, a bond that defied logic and reason. One might even call it love. It had to be love, for as many times as the Mandalorian had risked his life -- and, notably, a few other people’s lives -- just to keep him safe.

Mando would move whole planets for that kid, she believed. How did he expect to be able to just hand him over, to let him go?

“What do you think, Cara?” Leia’s voice broke through to her consciousness and they were all looking at her.

“Sorry, what?” she asked, embarrassed at herself for missing the whole conversation.

“They said Luke is off on a mission of his own right now,” Mando explained, filling her in as if he knew her head had been somewhere else. “We can either wait until he’s back or go try to find him.”

“How long is his mission going to take?”

“With Luke, you never know,” Han said with a shrug.

“Well, I can’t imagine it’s in your best interest to sit around and wait,” Cara mused, all too aware of the possibility that Moff Gideon could have associates looking for them right at that moment.

“I’d have to agree,” Leia said.

It was decided that Mando would take the kid and try to find the Jedi knight, continuing what seemed to be a never-ending wild bantha chase. The Solos went off to try to make contact with Luke to give him any sort of heads-up, and Cara was left sitting quietly with Mando and the kid.

“So where’s your shadow?” he asked suddenly. Not much escaped him, even through that tinted helmet.

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Everything okay?”

The child in her lap tilted his head at her inquisitively, waiting for her answer along with his adoptive father. Cara just shook her head and repeated, “I don’t know.”

The kid’s ears drooped and he cooed sadly.

“Do you....want to talk about it?” Mando asked, and it sounded almost painful for him to even reach out in such a way but he seemed genuinely interested. Parenting must have really been changing him.

Before she could answer, the baby’s big green ears perked up again at the sound of a ship landing outside, as did hers.

“Will you excuse me?” Cara asked rhetorically, plopping the kid down in Mando’s lap on her way out.

Halfway out to the landing pad she realized she had no idea what she was about to try to say to Rylan. All she knew was that they had to get some stuff figured out. Their partnership depended on it.

But Cara didn’t get a chance to say anything before the Corellian stepped off the ship and held out her hands to stop her.

“We need to talk.”

“I know, I was just coming to—“

“I can’t do this anymore,” Rylan said, cutting her off.

“You—what?” The pilot’s words and demeanor took her completely by surprise and Cara couldn’t think of anything smarter to say.

“I just....I can’t do it, Cara,” Ry said, then sighed. “All the rules and the lying to myself and everything. I just can’t. I...I have to go.”

Dumbfounded, Cara gaped at her as she tried to find the words to respond. “What do you mean, go?”

“I can’t stay here, Cara,” the Corellian said quietly, her eyes overflowing with sadness. “I can’t stay....with you. I think I have to do my own thing for a while. Alone.”

“But....Ry...” This wasn’t what Cara wanted at all. She wasn’t ready for more, but _nothing_ wouldn’t work for her either. She needed her partner, she needed her friend. What was happening? How had they messed this up so badly?

“I can leave your stuff here or take it back to Nevarro or whatever you want but....I can’t be your partner anymore,” Rylan said, staring at her boots with her hands thrust deep in her pockets.

Cara should have told her not to go. She should have told her not to do a damn thing with her stuff because no one was going anywhere. She should have told her she didn’t just have to be her partner anymore because she was so much more than that. She should have told her that she loved her.

But she couldn’t.

No matter how hard her heart tried to convince her brain that this was worth it, that even if it ended badly it was worth getting there anyway, she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t tell her fear to fuck off the way Rylan wanted. She couldn’t hold on the way Leia told her.

Cara wasn’t strong enough. All she could do was let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so deep into my next story now I can barely remember how this one ends, so it's like I get to read it for the first time again when I post each chapter. How fun.


	7. The Storm

Rylan’s new job as a mechanic at Lio’s Garage was exactly what she needed.

After backing out of her partnership with Cara -- and breaking Greef Karga’s heart in the process -- she hadn’t known exactly what she was going to do next. Smuggling was basically out of the question. Bounty hunting wouldn’t be the same. Most honorable professions were too boring. But when she’d stopped on Eadu for a couple of parts and seen the help wanted sign at the garage, it felt like, well, a sign.

For three months she’d been working tirelessly for the fatherly, gray-haired garage owner, fixing every type of problem on every type of ship imaginable for the travelers to Eadu’s port city. It wasn’t particularly fun work, but it required her full attention and brain power, and that was the important thing. The important thing was keeping her mind occupied so it didn’t go wandering. So it didn’t think about Cara.

Keeping that up was harder outside of work, so she’d taken to spending her nights in the few bars and cantinas the city had to offer, and taking a different girl home just about every night as well. None of them were allowed to stay for more than their one night. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice in a row.

The hour or so between kicking her nightly companion out of her ship and showing up at Lio’s had quickly become the hardest part of the day. It was the only time she didn’t have a distraction, the only time she couldn’t keep her mind from wandering. It was then that Cara’s face haunted her, when her voice was so loud in Rylan’s head that she must have been right there on the ship. But she wasn’t. She never would be again.

For three months the Corellian had been trying to really convince herself that she’d made the right choice, that leaving Cara and the Guild was the only thing to do. The stubborn Alderaanian was never going to come around, never going to feel the same way she did. There was no use in continuing to act as if she might, or in pretending that it wasn’t killing her that she hadn’t. And yet in that hour every morning, she always found herself wondering what might have happened if she’d just held out a little longer.

It was too late now, though.

Rylan’s daily hour of doubt had begun earlier than usual this morning, as she woke up before her typical time and laid in bed staring at the ceiling of her bunk while last night’s companion snored on next to her. She listened to the steady rainfall strike the metal shell of the Echo as yet another storm raged on outside. The infamous Eadu rain had been all but endless since she’d arrived, but she had no complaints. The inside of her mind was just as stormy, so it only felt right for the world outside it to be the same way.

The girl from the night before finally stirred awake and looked up at her. Rylan mentally kicked herself for having picked one with the same dark brown eyes as Cara.

“Hey,” the girl said with a raspy morning voice that also made the Corellian’s chest hurt.

Rylan didn’t answer, just stared back up at the ceiling and tried to feel the rain outside.

“So, last night was fun,” the girl said, rolling on top of her and smiling down, her face framed by dark brown hair. “You had fun too, right?”

“Yeah. Tons.” The pilot did have fun with all of her nightly companions -- that was the whole point after all -- but for the first time in her life, talking about it the next day was nowhere on her list of priorities. She removed the other woman from on top of her as politely as possible and got up. “Look, I gotta get ready for work, so...”

“Say no more,” the dark-haired woman said, following her out of bed and gathering her clothes. “Any chance I can see you again some oth--”

“No,” Rylan said before she could finish her question. “Sorry.”

She wasn’t really sorry, but the word usually served to lighten the blow. The few times she’d forgotten to use it, her temporary lovers had made things more difficult than the morning called for.

The girl just sighed in resignation as she dressed. “Why are all the cute ones emotionally unavailable?” she asked rhetorically, smirking at the Corellian with a knowing look.

Rylan had to chuckle. “Wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Well, let me know if you ever change your mind,” the woman said, kissing the pilot on the cheek and smiling as she left bunk.

_That’ll be hard_ , Rylan thought, realizing she’d neglected to even find out the woman’s name. Not that it mattered. She had no plans to change her routine any time soon, especially with someone who reminded her so much of her favorite Alderaanian.

The routine had been similar even before she’d met Cara, although not quite as disciplined or purposeful. Since Corellia, since the war, she’d enjoyed the company of many, many strangers. And that’s what it had always been about, the enjoyment, the fun. Keeping things light and simple, keeping her heart safe, were just added benefits. Now, however, the parade of strangers was all about keeping herself distracted, keeping Cara off her mind. But she’d have to do a better job of paying attention to who she brought home than she’d done last night if that was going to happen.

Her coworker and drinking buddy, Timber, had noticed her mistake the previous night as well, although he had no way of identifying it as such.

“Didn’t think you were into brunettes,” he teased when she showed up to the garage that morning, his big smile greeting her as it always did.

“Guess I was drunker than usual,” she responded with a shrug.

“Now there’s a scary thought,” he laughed. Timber had taken to Rylan quickly when he realized she was one of the few people on the planet who could outdrink him. They’d spent many nights since then blowing their salaries from Lio’s at the bars, playing wingman for each other as they each tried to pick up women. It was one partnership Ry knew came with absolutely no complications.

“Don’t worry, I’ll leave them all for you from now on,” she said with a friendly slap on his shoulder.

“Oh, I appreciate that buddy. I really, really do,” he said. Timber was handsome enough and an incredibly sweet guy, but even he had trouble getting girls’ attention when Rylan was turning on the charm.

“You two are embarrassing,” cut in the garage owner, Lio, with an amused shake of his head. As a happily married man, his employees’ constant talk about their nightly adventures wore quickly on him.

“Sorry, boss,” Rylan said. “We can’t all have a wife at home that we love and cherish.”

“Yeah, nor do we want them,” Timber added with a grin.

The Corellian couldn’t fully agree with that thought, however.

~

Cara had been sitting in the cockpit of the _Razor Crest_ , staring distantly out at the endless space around her, when the kid interrupted her peace and quiet. Well, her quiet, anyway.

She hadn’t found much peace at all in the three months since her partner had left, since Rylan had all but confessed her love for her then flown off to who knows where when Cara wasn’t able to reciprocate. Going off with Mando to find Luke Skywalker had been the easy decision after that, but even with such an important mission to focus on, she still hadn’t been able to fully convince herself that all this was for the better.

She was trying once again to do so when the kid toddled in and tugged on the leg of her pants, startling her out of her trance.

“Hey, how’d you get up here?” she asked, truly having no idea how he’d made it up the ladder. But she’d seen him do crazier things. “Thought it was somebody’s bed time?”

He cooed at her and lifted his arms until she picked him up and set him in her lap.

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh? What’s on your mind?” At first Cara had felt crazy any time she found herself talking to the little one -- he couldn’t talk back to her, after all -- but after a while she’d found some comfort in it. With ears that big he was bound to be a good listener, and she had poured out all her problems and worries to him over the course of the last three months.

Still, Cara wasn’t otherwise much of a talker (although on this ship that was a relative term), and she longed for the way Rylan had always filled the long hours of silence during space travel. Story after story, joke after joke, she always found something to say, even when her partner might have preferred a little quiet time. Cara missed that now.

She missed a lot of things. She hadn’t realized when she let her partner go just how much she would miss about her. Some of the things were obvious, like their bunk room activities and easy conversations. But others had surprised her, like how she used to watch the pilot’s face light up every time they jumped to hyperspace or how Rylan had proudly applauded every time Cara aggressively took down one of their bounty targets.

The Alderaanian shook her head at the memory of that happening the first time, just as Mando entered the cockpit in a panicked rush. “Oh good, he’s with you.”

“Well, where else would he be? Not like he can leave the ship.”

“No, but you’d be surprised at the places he’ll find to hide.”

The kid giggled as Cara poked playfully at his nose. “You like to hide from your papa?”

“Don’t encourage him,” Mando pleaded, taking the baby from her to put him back to bed.

“Not my fault he likes me more!” she called after him. That probably wasn’t true, but the kid did seem to have a strong bond with his “Aunt Cara,” especially now that their one-sided talks were growing more frequent.

The trio was a day out from its next destination and Cara wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to hope they’d actually find Luke this time or not. They’d already struck out on a few worlds the Solos had suggested as possible places to find him, but Mando hadn’t seemed too disappointed that the journey had to continue. Each day she became more convinced that he wasn’t going to be able to part with the kid if and when they ever caught up with Skywalker.

They hadn’t talked about it much, just like they hadn’t talked about Cara’s situation much. But sometimes she could practically hear the storm in his head, the fight between The Way and how he really felt. In those moments she felt the urge to tell him not to let the kid go, to hang on if he thought they were better off together.

But that would have been hypocritical of her.

So instead she just looked at him when he returned to the cockpit and asked, “Are you sure about this?”

He was silent for a long time, still and thoughtful. Finally he sighed heavily. “No. No, I’m not.”

“Then why are we still going?” He started to speak but she cut him off. “Do not ‘This is The Way’ me. What do you really want to do? What do you think is best for him?”

The Mandalorian looked at her through the tinted mask of his helmet and she could feel the desperate indecision underneath.

“He’s better off without me,” he finally said, as if trying to convince himself.

“That’s a load of bantha crap and you know it,” Cara replied. “If it weren’t for you he’d be dead or in the hands of Imps. How is that better off?”

“He’ll be better off with Skywalker. With his people.”

“You are his people,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “You are the only one that cares about him. You can’t just give him up. Don’t....don’t make the same mistake I did.”

He looked at her, and Cara tried to hide the fact that tears had sprung into her eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to make such a direct connection between their two situations. But she couldn’t just let him go through what she was.

Letting her partner go had felt like the smarter thing, the safer thing, in the moment. But she found out quickly how wrong she’d been. The things she’d been so afraid of -- losing Rylan, having her heart broken -- had happened anyway. She got all the pain with none of the good things that could have come before it.

Mando watched her silently wrestle with her feelings. He’d seen her change since teaming up with the charming pilot, then change again when their partnership ended. She’d never seemed as happy as she was when they were a bounty hunting team.

“You love her,” he said simply.

She didn’t confirm or deny it. Just looked at him with watery eyes and said, “I never should have let her go.”

“Then let’s go find her.”

Cara laughed dryly. “No. It’s too late,” she said. “Besides, we’re already trying to find someone else, remember?”

“Not anymore,” Mando said, disengaging the _Crest_ ’s autopilot. “You’re right. I’m not letting him go. And I’m not letting you give up either.”

She gaped at him, genuinely shocked at his newfound conviction. All she could do was nod in silent agreement.

“Good,” his mechanical voice said. “So, where to?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter coming Friday. Although I could probably be persuaded to keep going on it if there was interest.


	8. Fight

Despite what he told them on a near-daily basis, Lio wasn’t actually embarrassed by his employees’ philandering ways. His garage’s reputation could stand it if Timber and Rylan slept around with every woman in and out of the Eadu spaceport. They were better mechanics than they were problematic idiots.

He wasn’t so sure his business could sustain them getting into many more fights, however.

The first time it happened, he’d chalked it up to alcohol and boredom. They came to work the next day and sheepishly explained away Timber’s busted hand and Rylan’s black eye, given to her by someone at the bar with whom she’d had “a disagreement.”

“You think she looks rough, you should see him,” Timber had said, grinning proudly once they realized their boss wasn’t upset.

The second time, Lio got a little more context. But he also got a little more worried. The scrawny Corellian had squared up to a former Imperial soldier without hesitation, and that was something that could cause him headaches if it became a habit.

“This planet is lousy with Imps, Killis,” he said of Eadu, a former base for the Empire’s science division. “You can’t punch all of them or we’ll never break even here.”

“I know, boss,” she said, genuinely sorry for upsetting her friend but not at all sorry for laying out a former buckethead. The war had ended long ago, but the pain and suffering the Empire had caused likely never would. So she took it upon herself to remind the remnants of it that she would never forget either.

“And you,” Lio continued, turning his attention to Timber, “You’re twice as big as her. Please stop her next time, okay?”

Timber just nodded dutifully.

“If anybody else was pulling this crap I’d have no problem letting them go. You two are lucky I like you so much,” the garage owner concluded with a smirk, then left them alone to go work in his office.

“I don’t really feel that lucky,” Timber said with an uncharacteristic frown as they both got to work.

~

Cara’s hands vibrated with nervous anticipation as Mando brought the _Razor Crest_ down at the Eadu spaceport.

It had been one thing to agree to his sudden decision to make her follow her heart back to her partner, but it would be a whole different thing to actually face her again. What if Rylan didn’t want her back anymore? What if she was angry? What if she’d already moved on?

Cara shook her head as if to move all those questions out of her mind. She couldn’t think like that anymore. She couldn’t be held back by her anxiety or fear. Whatever happened now, at least she could say she was trying, she was fighting for what she wanted.

The Mandalorian turned his pilot’s seat around to face her when the ship was safely on the ground, and the kid in his lap cooed at her, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Ready?” Mando asked. Cara had activated the tracker she had on the _Echo_ in order to find out what world Rylan (or at least the ship) was on, but they’d have to employ some more bounty hunting tactics to actually find her in person. For the most part, that would include Cara asking around for her with the locals.

“Guess I better be,” she said, standing and rubbing the kid’s ear before leaving the cockpit.

It shouldn’t have surprised her in the slightest when the very first person she spoke to -- a worker at the spaceport -- knew exactly who she was asking about. Rylan made friends everywhere, after all. She was a memorable person.

“Fixed my speeder just last week,” the man said. “Rides like a charm now.”

He pointed Cara in the direction of a nearby garage called Lio’s, where the Corellian had apparently been working as a mechanic for months. That also surprised her. Rylan had never enjoyed staying in the same place for very long, Cara knew. The pilot in her always grew restless after a week or two on the same world, her feet itching to get off the ground again. Maybe the guy had the wrong person after all, she reasoned.

But as she located Lio’s and neared the garage, her eyes landed on a familiar gray hunk of metal only a few hundred meters away. She took out the tracker just to be sure, and as expected it flashed rapidly, indicating that the freighter was indeed the _Echo_ , the ship she’d called home for some of the best months of her life.

Thunder boomed overhead and rain began to fall lightly as Cara approached the garage. She took a deep breath and silently prayed that this would go the way she wanted.

Her heart skipped a beat when she walked through the open door and saw a familiar mop of golden hair and the back of a gray jacket.

~

Rylan was finding it hard to concentrate that morning, after the brief lecture from Lio about her behavior.

She couldn’t blame him. She’d more than earned it. But she also knew it wasn't going to be easy to change her ways, and if she couldn’t and lost her job for it, she’d really be screwed. If only Cara were there. She would happily punch enough Imps for the both of them.

The Corellian cursed herself for even thinking that as she finished her current project and joined Timber at the waist-high wall separating the garage entry from the workspace. She leaned on it with her back toward the door, absentmindedly watching him tinker with some parts on the other side.

A crack of thunder rumbled outside and he snapped his head up. “Just when I thought we’d get one day without rain,” he muttered.

“At least rain drives the customers in,” Rylan replied with a shrug, but Timber’s attention was still at the door.

“It sure does,” he said, staring out as a grin spread across his face. “Wow. It might just be my lucky day after all.”

“Oh?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in amusement. “What makes you say that?”

“Because a very pretty dark-haired lady just walked into our shop,” he whispered as he came around the wall.

She laughed. “Go get her, big guy.”

“Hi there,” she heard Timber say in his most charming voice. “How can we help you?”

“I hear this is the place to come to get a ship fixed.”

Rylan’s whole body went cold as a familiar smooth voice replied to him.

She almost didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to be disappointed if it turned out her ears were playing a trick on her.

“You heard right,” Timber told the customer. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Not sure exactly,” the visitor said, and Rylan was sure then -- it wasn’t a trick. She turned around slowly to see Cara looking directly back at her, eyes full of emotion and intention. “All I really know is that there’s a piece missing.”

They held each other’s gaze as another crack of thunder rolled through the open garage.

“Oh, well, ma’am they’re usually called parts,” Timber corrected good-naturedly.

Rylan finally found her voice and stepped forward to pat him on the back. “Hey Timb, how about you, uh, let me handle this one?”

“What? Why—” he started to ask, but saw the way the two of them were looking at each other and backed down. Whoever this particular brunette was, she must have been the reason his buddy wouldn’t look at any others.

“Why don’t we go see what the problem is?” the Corellian asked as she guided Cara back outside, trying to keep up the ruse of her being just another customer.

The rain had started coming down stronger, and it fell steadily on their heads as they walked in silence around to the side of the garage, each lost in their own nervous thoughts. Finally Rylan spoke. “How did you find me?”

Cara pointed in the direction of the _Echo_ , off in the distance. “I’ve had a tracker on that thing ever since the job on Kessel. This is the first time I’ve ever turned it on.”

Rylan chuckled lightly as she looked at the ship. She’d almost taken the head off of a poor spaceport attendant on Kessel, believing he’d held some responsibility for her beloved freighter being stolen, only to realize that it hadn’t been stolen at all -- she’d just forgotten which docking bay they’d parked in.

She looked back at Cara, whose dark brown eyes pierced her own confidently, despite what looked like a nervous shake in her hands.

“What are you doing here?” she finally asked in a voice only just audible over the rain.

“Well, it’s like I said,” Cara replied, taking a tentative step toward her, “I’ve got a piece missing.”

She took another step forward and took the Corellian’s hand, dirty with grease and wet from the downpour.

Rylan flinched away. “Cara. I told you,” she said, her voice thick with hurt. She couldn’t go through this again, couldn’t get her hopes up only to have her feelings ignored again. “I can’t. I can’t go back to what we were doing.”

“I know,” said the Alderaanian. “That’s not what I want either.”

“Then what do you want?” Ry asked desperately.

The rain had soaked them both already, matting Rylan’s dirty blonde hair to her head and rolling ceaselessly down her face. Cara couldn’t stand how sad it made her look, how sad _she_ had made her look. She never wanted her to look like that again.

“You,” she said, reaching for her hand again. “I just want you.”

Just as she had the first night they spent together, Cara pulled Rylan closer by the hand she held and kissed her. Only this time it was out of love and not desire. This time she was giving away her heart.

And this time the Corellian broke it off before she was finished.

Rylan separated them, breathing heavily as she searched Cara’s eyes. They were even more beautiful than she’d remembered. And there was something new in them, but she couldn’t be sure what it was. She couldn’t be sure about any of this.

“How do I know you won’t get scared and leave again?” she asked.

“I can’t promise you I won’t get scared. Hell, I’m scared right now,” Cara admitted, letting Rylan feel the way her hands continued to shake. “But I’m more scared of never giving this a shot than I am of anything else.”

The rain continued to beat down on them as Cara pleaded with the Corellian’s blue eyes to believe her, to trust her. She knew she hadn’t exactly earned it, but if Rylan was willing to give her the chance, she’d spend the rest of her life trying to, fighting to.

“What happened to the rules?” the pilot asked loudly over a clap of thunder, her sad look finally melting away.

Cara shook her rain-soaked head and reached out for the flap of Rylan’s jacket.

“Don’t need them anymore,” she answered, pulling her closer again. “I love you. No rules are going to change that.”

Ry smiled through an unsteady breath. “Did you just say--”

“Yeah I know you heard me,” Cara said and kissed her again. 

This time Rylan had no intention of cutting it off. They were both content to stay that way forever, out there in the rain and the storm, finally open to the feelings they’d fought for so long.

Unfortunately, they were interrupted by the clearing of a throat nearby.

“Hate to break that up, but,” Timber called to his fellow mechanic, “the boss would prefer if we focused on actual paying customers.”

Rylan turned around with a laugh, still holding onto Cara’s hand.

“Yeah yeah, I’ll be right there,” she said, and he shook his head with a grin and went back inside. She turned back with an apologetic smile. “I should probably...”

“Go,” Cara ordered her. “I’ll just let Mando know I found you and meet you at the ship after you’re done.”

“Oh, you brought Mando?” the Corellian asked with a confused tilt of her head.

“Actually, he brought me,” Cara admitted.

Rylan smiled. “Well, I look forward to thanking him.”

She kissed the Alderaanian once more and they broke apart, disappointed to go their separate ways but finally content in the knowledge that it was only temporary. She almost made it to the door before turning back.

“Hey!” she shouted to her partner over the din of the rain, smiling when she turned around. “I love you too.”

And contrary to all her expectations, hearing those words for the first time didn’t scare Cara in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end, for now. No promises but I think there's a good possibility I could add on to this once I get through my next thing. Hope you've all found this enjoyable (can't imagine you'd still be reading this chapter if you haven't but who knows). If you want to know what I'm working on now come hit me up on tumblr!
> 
> And if you haven't read my other Cara story yet, please do! In my personal opinion, both parts of that series are better than this (if you disagree please tell me why, I'm very curious to know).

**Author's Note:**

> As always, catch me on tumblr @chippingthegoalkeeper


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